04/22, 11:30pm

Capo song altering app

SuperMegaUltraGroovy has unveiled Capo for Mac OS X, an application designed to help musicians learn to play their favorite audio tracks. The software slows down the speed of songs to help users play at a rate that is more comfortable. In addition to speed control, users can also adjust a song's pitch, in order to change their key or fine tune them to match the preferred instrument. Users can also set markers, and create loops to help go over specific areas of the songs without loosing their place.

04/22, 10:50pm

LArobe Netbook sleeves

Be.ez has launched the LArobe Netbook sleeves, a new line of protection sleeves designed to fit a variety of 10.2-inch and 8.9-inch netbooks. Initially created for Apple Notebooks, each sleeve is made with low resilience polyurethane, offers 5mm of protection, and helps keep the netbook free from scratches while in the sleeve. The LArobe Netbook 10.2-inch is available in 2Pink, 2Blue, 2Green, Black and White, and RedKiss colors, and is compatible with MSI Wind, ASUS 1000, ASUS S101, Medion Akoya mini E1210, Samnsung NC10, and Samsung 310 netbooks.

04/22, 10:30pm

Aliph Jawbone Prime

Aliph in a low-key intro tonight revealed Jawbone Prime, the third generation of its Bluetooth headset. The Prime gets a slight cosmetic redesign that includes new, more varied colors but revolves around an updated noise cancellation engine that adds another 6dB to 9dB of outside sound reduction through the namesake jaw-based method. The mechanism is also designed to work more reliably when the jaw isn't in contact and particularly to reduce wind noise.

04/22, 8:20pm

Flickery, ToDo List

GaragePay 1.5 ($25) can help users manage all aspects of their PayPal accounts. Users can run a PayPal account directly from GaragePay, downloading, searching and archiving transactions, and can create smart folders to track accounts and browse or search transactions while offline. In GargePay 1.5 all balances of an account are shown in the sidebar and additional transaction information, such as the business name, address, phone, etc. can be found on the right side of the main window. The update has also added in the ability to send money and refund transactions. [Download - 3.1MB]

04/22, 7:45pm

EU set to fine Intel

The European Union has prepared a draft decision in an ongoing antitrust case against Intel that appears to be approaching completion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Unnamed sources familiar with the matter claim the EU will seek a fine against the company, although the draft can be modified as it continues through the process.

04/22, 6:55pm

Apple iPod sales

Although Apple experienced a decline in Mac sales for the quarter ending in March, iPod sales and App Store purchases continue to grow. The company sold over 11 million iPods, a growth of three percent compared to last year's quarter. The only iPod to launch during the three month period, the iPod shuffle 3G, was released just two weeks before the end of March.

04/22, 6:25pm

AMD Opteron Roadmap

Marking thh sixth-anniversary of the Opteron processor, AMD has outlined its future server architecture and its dual-path roadmap that will focus on both developing low-power processors as well as performance on a platform level. Having introduced its Opteron EE processor on Wednesday morning, says its next-generation "Istanbul" processors are now expected to ship in May and its "Magny-Cours" processors due in the first quarter of 2010. AMD promised that the "Istanbul" will be compatible will existing processor sockets but that "Magny-Cours" features a new format known as Direct Connect Architecture 2.0. In 2011, the company expects that it will deliver Opteron chips codenamed "Interlagos" with 16 cores on its high-end "Maranello" platform.

04/22, 6:25pm

Cook: No Apple netbook

There remains little or no interest at Apple in developing a netbook, the company's COO remarks. In response to a question from Barclay analyst Ben Reitzes, asked during the company's Q2 results call, Tim Cook has expressed disappointment with the current state of netbooks. "When I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens," says Cook. "And just not a consumer experience and not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly."

04/22, 6:05pm

Pocket Therapist, Twist

Reid Minion ($3) is a document and book-reading enhancement application, designed to enable the personal customization of font, display contrast and polarity of documents. Users have the ability to display larger fonts, set the reading display and style, and make use of a moving highlight that can help the person keep pace at a preset speed. The app also features a word flash mode that is used to present words in a flashcard style. Users can access a database of free e-books along with the files in their own Google Documents account.

04/22, 5:40pm

Wireless N adapter ships

Rokland has announced its next generation of wireless USB 2.0 adapter, the RokN generation 2, an 802.11n draft 2.0 device geared toward Mac users. The new wireless adapter works with Mac platforms, Windows 2000, XP and Vista, and numerous Linux variations. The Gen2 device brings Wireless N to macs that are otherwise limited to B- and G-series connections, an advantage in a household where one legacy computer could slow an entire N-based network.

04/22, 5:35pm

Apple Q2 retail growth

Apple's retail growth in the second fiscal quarter for 2009 was marginal but significant, CFO Peter Oppenheimer has revealed. The worldwide retail chain produced $1.47 billion in revenue, a slight increase from $1.45 billion a year ago. Approximately 438,000 Macs were sold through the chain, of which half are said to sold to first-time Mac owners; the company only opened one new store during the period however, and average revenue per store was just $5.9 million, a significant fall from $7.1 million in Q2 2008.

04/22, 4:55pm

iPod sales up Macs down

Apple on Wednesday reported its financial information for the quarter ending in March, showing mixed results for product sales. Mac shipments were down three percent for the quarter, with sales of 2.22 million computers. Despite predictions that iPod sales would level off or even decline, the company sold over 11 million devices which marks a gain of three percent over last year's quarter.

04/22, 4:55pm

DealNN: 17-in. monitor

Today's featured DealNN deal is on the HP 17-inch LCD flat panel monitor from TigerDirect.com. It is regularly priced at $149.99, but has been reduced to $99.99, and until 4/30/09 a mail in rebate offer is available that cuts the price again to $68.99. The HP monitor has a contrast ratio of 800:1, a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 and 5ms response time.

04/22, 4:35pm

Apple revenue is $8.16b

Apple on Wednesday announced revenue of $8.16 billion --up 9 percent from the year-ago quarter -- and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share, beating analysts estimates of earnings of $1.09 per share on revenue of $8 billion. The March results compare to revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. For the current quarter, gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter and international sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter's revenue. Apple said it sold 2.22 million Macs during the quarter, representing a 3 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter, but that it sold 11.01 million iPods during the quarter, a 3 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 3.79 million representing 123 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter, the company said.

04/22, 4:25pm

Compal scaling back MIDs

DigiTimesreported on Wednesday that Compal Electronics reduced the budget and other resources for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) as the company believes the future of the market segment is uncertain. The report cites unnamed industry sources for the information, and Compal itself has confirmed that some of its MID focus was shifted into netbook development. It will continue to ship MIDs in smaller volumes.

04/22, 4:15pm

Palm Centros on $199 sale

Palm is now offering unlocked GSM Centro smartphones for $199 in cobalt blue, ruby red or glacier white. The aging handset was first spotted in the summer of 2007, and it hasn't changed since. The handset sports a full QWERTY keyboard with rubber buttons, 64MB or 128MB of built-in storage space and a 320x320 pixel display. A microSD card slot lets users add 4GB of storage space to the handset.

04/22, 4:05pm

Judge Extends MS Oversight

District of Columbia Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly today extended the oversight of Microsoft's compliance with an antitrust ruling by 18 months to May 12th, 2011. The move follows a Department of Justice request for a second extension and comes supported by Judge Kollar-Kotelly after she determined that the ability to watch Microsoft's actions was in a "much better place" than when an extension was signed late last year.

04/22, 3:55pm

LinkOptimizer 3.3 update

Zevrix Solutions has launched LinkOptimizer 3.3, an update to its link-size and resolution optimization software for Adobe InDesign documents. The application allows users to reduce the size of InDesign jobs and increase processing speed by eliminating excessive data. The new version supports Photoshop EPS links in InDesign CS4, overcoming a bug in the previous releases. The application now checks the resolutions of Photoshop EPS images independently from InDesign CS4.

04/22, 3:45pm

SkyNote $100 Android PC

Known for making Skype headsets, Chinese company SkyNote is teasing with its prototype Alpha 680 netbook based on Google's Android platform. The device is conceived more as a larger smartphone-class device and has features that reflect the change: the screen is just 7 inches and has a resolution of 800x480, while the ARM11 processor clocks at just 533MHz. The 128MB of RAM can be doubled, while the 1GB of storage space is upgradeable to 4GB.

04/22, 3:35pm

Warner Bros HD trade-in

Warner Bros. has launched a new trade-in program that allows owners of high-definition movies on the now-defunct HD DVD format to trade them in for the same title on the surviving Blu-ray format. Known as Red2blu, the promo lets owners trade up to 25 HD DVD titles produced by Warner for the same title on Blu-ray. A $4.95 charge applies to each movie, as well as the associated shipping and handling costs of $6.95 for each Blu-ray title.

04/22, 3:20pm

iPhone becomes teleprompte

As camcorders continue to shrink, so has the venerable teleprompter -- to the size of an iphone. Bodelin Technologies has created an iPhone app and several accessories that turn an iphone or iPod Touch into a teleprompter.

04/22, 3:20pm

Intel GN40 hampered by XP

While Intel's new GN40 graphics chipset for the Atom N280 CPU is, in theory, capable of playing back 1080p HD video, in practice it does not, thanks to the limitations placed upon it by Windows XP. As confirmed by Chinese website HKEPC, which reviewed a GN40-equipped ASUS EeePC 1004DN netbook with Windows XP, the configuration was not working properly in decoding 1080p video. This is due to XP only having DirectX Video Acceleration 1.0 (DXVA 1.0) available, whereas the GN40 requires DXVA 2.0 and DirectX 10. As virtually all netbooks ship with XP, the GN40's HD video playback ability goes largely wasted on the new system.

04/22, 3:20pm

Kindle 2 Cost Breakdown

An iSuppli cost breakdown today of Amazon's Kindle 2 reveals that the e-book reader ultimately costs a relatively small amount more to build than an iPhone, or roughly half the actual $359 price. Where an iPhone 3G cost $174.33 to make when new, the Kindle 2 costs $185.49 after factoring in both the raw parts as well as assembly. The most expensive component is E-Ink's 6-inch digital paper display, which by itself costs $60; the screen is needed both to provide a natural feel but to let users read even when the unit is otherwise powered down.

04/22, 3:15pm

Flickery 1.1 available now

Eternal Storms has released an update to its desktop Flicker client, Flickery 1.1, which adds photo sharing through iChat Theater and Twitter, an enhanced interface and improved speed. Flickery allows users to upload photos to a Flickr photostream, organize photosets and track favorites. It also provides basic photo editing abilities such as cropping, rotation, resizing and applying filters.

04/22, 2:30pm

LG TVs get DivX HD video

LG Electronics and DivX on Wednesday announced more than 200 of LG's new line of digital TVs are the first to have the ability of playing back full DivX 1080p videos. The LH50-, LH70-, LH85-, PS70- and PS80-series HDTVs from LG, among others, are DivX Certified, and can play DivX HD videos from connected PCs or the Internet via a device connected to the TV's USB slot.

04/22, 2:05pm

ATT iPhone vs Palm Points

AT&T is handing out a memo to sales staff that encourages them to counter the Palm Pre with a set of pre-made talking points promoting the iPhone. The note slipped through PreCentral points to objective data, such as the Pre's lack of music sync software, the absence of a 16GB version, and its inability to roam outside of North America. However, it also makes more questionable arguments, claiming that the multi-touch aware webOS is "not intuitive," that the App Catalog is "unproven," and that the iPhone is mostly metal and glass where the Pre is plastic.

04/22, 1:25pm

ASUS outs P30A notebook

Taiwan's ASUS on Wednesday launched the 1-inch thick P30A business notebook, first spotted early last month, which is powered by a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processor. There are two SO-DIMM sockets that can support 4GB of RAM. The notebook uses a 13.3-inch, 16:9, LED-backlit display with 1366x768 resolution and an anti-glare coating. ASUS opted to use a magnesium alloy for the PC's chassis and gives the hard drive a free-fall sensor to reduce the amount of data loss in a drop.

04/22, 1:15pm

Nokia CWM Disappointment

Nokia's Comes With Music unlimited download service has performed well short of expectations, analysis by UK research group Music Ally says. The firm estimates that only 23,000 people have bought the special phones equipped with 1 year of music service and says the number is exceptionally low given the amount of advertising. The UK was the first country to adopt the service and is considered a potential sign of Comes With Music's performance elsewhere.

04/22, 12:10pm

Toshiba dates NB200 for UK

On Wednesday, Toshiba announced it has added the Mini NB200 netbook to its UK lineup, which shares specs and is largely a rebadged version of the just-announced Dynabook UX headed for Western markets. Both use the same 10.1-inch widescreen LED-backlit display with 1024x600 resolution and near full-sized keyboard. The same options will be offered, with a standard 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor or the more powerful 1.66GHz N280 Atom sitting on the same 945GSE mainboard.

04/22, 11:55am

EU Roaming Caps Start July

The European Union Parliament today voted in favor of a plan from the European Commission to cap roaming rates for cellular service in any of its member states. The motion takes effect July 1st and will particularly cut data and text messaging costs. Internet access out-of-country will be limited to €1 per megabyte at wholesale rates, or far less than the €1.63 charged today. Text messaging will also drop sharply with individual messages costing no more than €0.11 versus an average of €0.28.

04/22, 11:25am

Q1 iPhone sales past 3.7m?

Following AT&T's disclosure of its Q1 financial results, indicating more than 1.6 million iPhone activations, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has calculated that Apple may have reached sales of over 3.7 million iPhones overall for the quarter. Apple Store purchases and international shipments were combined with the AT&T number to estimate the total global sales.

04/22, 11:00am

Panasonic car HD player

Panasonic on Wednesday introduced its new flip-out in-car navigation and entertainment head unit, the 7-inch touchscreen CN-HX3000D. The 720p, Windows Automotive-powered unit has GPS functionality, is compatible with Google Maps, and has a 40GB hard disk drive built-in that handles both points of interest as well as a user's own media. The optical drive can play back DVDs in 5.1-channel surround sound or broadcasts from the 1Seg TV Tuner. An HDMI port lets users connect the also just-unveiled CY-BB1000D Blu-ray drive, endowing the CN-HX3000D with the ability to play HD video.

04/22, 10:40am

HP dv3t April 2009

HP this morning formally unveiled a mild redesign of the Pavilion dv3t. The 13.3-inch notebook is HP's lightest Intel home notebook at 4.9 pounds but is positioned as both fast and longer-lasting. It can use up to a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo and has options for 8GB of RAM and dedicated GeForce 105M G video, but will run for up to 4.25 hours (with wireless off) on the stock battery and up to 7 hours on an extended 9-cell pack, both thanks in part to an LED-backlit display.

04/22, 10:30am

New Star Grand Prix 1.0.7

Newstargames.com has announced an update to its racing game New Star Grand Prix 1.0.7. The game provides all the teams, drivers, and tracks of the 2009 Grand Prix season, and allows users to progress through a career mode that spans up to 10 seasons on 17 different tracks. The latest version offers a new KERS boost system, slipstreaming and a speedometer HUD. Gamers can now play in twelve different languages, including English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Polish, Finnish, Turkish and Slovenian.

04/22, 10:15am

Apple May Get 15in OLED

Apple is tipped to get one of the largest practical OLED displays as early as this summer, a rumor from Australia's Smarthouse. Reportedly, a senior executive from LG Display says Apple will use a newly-developed 15-inch screen for a "brand new" notebook due in June and will be one of the first companies anywhere to use the screen. It wouldn't show up in other companies' products until a hybrid TV and computer monitor appears in the fall.

04/22, 10:00am

FiFi, Fido, Split & Folio

Managing Editor has released FiFi XT 8.0 for QuarkXPress 8 and Fido 6.0 for Adobe InDesign CS4, along with Split & Folio for both publishing programs. Both FiFi and Fido are designed to enhance the functionality of the company's ad-layout and issue-planning software, while increasing the productivity of paginators when dealing with missing ads. The plug-ins can be used to restore file-path information for graphic and ad files, after the ad map has been opened in QuarkXPress or In Design. The process helps avoid manually linking any remaining empty ad boxes to the appropriate digital files.

04/22, 9:25am

Macs power poker coverage

Among the many curiosities on display this week at NAB is the unique creation of
the Italian company Clonwerk, called U-Bet. The company has rigged a full-sized card table, complete with playing cards and poker chips embedded with sensors, to automate the broadcast of poker tournaments. The system is totally Mac-based.

04/22, 9:25am

Seagate Barracuda LP

Seagate on Wednesday seized on the eco-friendly trend with the launch of its Barracuda LP (Low Power) hard drives. The disks have the same capacities as regular desktop drives, up to 2TB, but throttle the rotation speed back from 7,200RPM to 5,900RPM. This and other optimizations help cut the active power use by as much as half versus regular drives. The company also aggressively claims that the LP series uses about 25 percent less power than competing hard drives.

04/22, 9:00am

AMD Opteron EE

Hoping to compete on energy over speed, AMD today launched a new take on its pro-level processors in the form of the Opteron EE. The processors, which AMD claims are the lowest power quad-core x86 processor, are a functional match for the latest Opterons but use just 40W of average power; the use is less than the 55W of the already modified Opteron HE and far less than the 75W or more of full-power Opterons. The chipmaker considers the EE ideal for blades, rackmount servers and other systems which are often part of densely packed clusters.

04/22, 8:25am

ATT Q1 2009 Results

AT&T this morning posted results for the first calendar quarter of 2009 that it attributed significantly to its performance with the iPhone. The company had a net gain of 1.2 million new cellphone subscribers but says that it activated 1.6 million iPhone 3G devices, suggesting that the users of Apple's handset are offsetting potential losses at the carrier. AT&T also credits the iPhone for preventing a slide in the company's wireless operating income margin, which has been kept high at 40.9 percent, and for more than doubling the number of smartphones on the network in the past year: about 31.7 percent of the 61 million subscription phones are in the smartphone class.

04/22, 7:25am

Sonnet preps card reader

Sonnet at NAB this week is demonstrating the Qio, a unique media card reader/writer that includes a built-in E4P SATA host controller that gives it hooks for external hard drives as well as flash cards. The device has dual P2, SxS and CompactFlash slots. An included adapter supports SD, XF and other card formats. Four eSATA ports are located on the back panel.